


Choice

by TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving



Series: Sterek Bingo 2017 [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Somewhat graphic description of violence, based on a book, death of children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:15:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving/pseuds/TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving
Summary: Derek, Stiles and their two children move across the country to start a new chapter of their life.At first everything is great, but then the cat dies...For the theme: Horror





	Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Another entry for [this](https://sterek-bingo.tumblr.com/)  
> Theme: Horror
> 
>  
> 
> Based on "Pet Cemetary" by Stephen King. All recognizeable characters and events belongs to him and whoever owns Teen Wolf. All mistakes, however, are mine
> 
> As always:Comments, kudos and constructive critism are welcome. So are title and tag suggestions

A man is sitting with his elbows on the top of his kitchen table, face buried in the darkness of his large hands, shoulders slumped in despair as silent sobs wrack through him, tears washing the blood from his hands.

_A year earlier_

”We’re here,” Derek says heaving a relieved sigh at the thought of finally getting out of the car where they’ve been confined for the past eight hours.  
Moving across the country had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now far too many days in the cramped space of the car with two small children and the hyper activeness that was Stiles, Derek could admit that he’d more than once considered giving up and just settle wherever they’d happened to be at the time somebody had a fit.  
But they were here now, finally able to see their new home and even Derek had to admit to feeling slightly excited getting to see the house in person, rather than just from the photographs the realtor had sent them.

With a groan he made it out the car, taking the time to stretch his back and get used to standing rather than sitting, vowing to himself that if they decided to move back they were _not_ going to go by car. Knowing that Stiles would keep an eye on the kids while talking to the perky realtor lady Derek made his way to the back seat, taking out the cat carrier to let his daughter’s cat get some fresh air.

\---

They spent the first week settling. The first night the four of them sleep on air mattresses in the living room, trying to get used to the new noises and ignoring the way everything is a different from the way they’re used to. When the truck with the rest of their belongings arrive at lunch the next day Derek helps the movers unloading while Stiles entertain the kids, making sure they don’t run out onto the road.

By the time the sun sets the bedrooms are furnished, Trisha and Tad playing with their things, Derek’s unpacking the books while Stiles is making dinner. Just as he places the last one on the shelf there’s a knock on the door and with a heads up to his husband Derek goes to answer.  
He’s surprised when he’s met with an elderly couple who he assumes to be their neighbors, but before he can say something rude (it’s not as if he _wants_ to be, he just come across that way sometimes) the woman is holding out a casserole and the man is introducing himself.  
Knowing Stiles will want to meet them Derek invites them inside, Norma making appreciative noises as she makes her way through the house as if she’s lived here for the last fifty years and within seconds he can hear Stiles’ voice mixing with her’s. A quick glance at Jud reveals the older man is smiling softly and when he notices Derek looking he shrugs as if to say “what can you do?” Derek makes a quick detour to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers, smiles lovingly at the sight of Stiles already completely engrossed in whatever Norma’s telling him and knowing better than to disturb him he goes back to the living room where he sits quietly with Jud while drinking their beers.

It becomes a thing; at least twice a week they’ll have dinner with the Crandalls, and while Stiles and Norma do the dishes and talk Derek and Jud will sit on the porch with a beer enjoying the stillness of the night and the noise from inside the house. Sometimes Trisha and Tad are outside too, playing in the front yard under the watchful eye of the two men and sometimes Stiles and Norma joins them, their quiet voices a blanket their husbands can wrap themselves in and get lost in.

\---

At long last every piece of furniture is where it’s supposed to be, every garment placed on racks and shelves and all the boxes are unpacked and the house looks like somebody actually lives here. Trisha starts school and Stiles starts work – he’s a doctor at the local ER – and Derek stays at home, looking after Tad while trying to write his next novel.  
Sometimes, when he’s going crazy with only the company of a cat and a three year old, he’ll cross the road and let Norma take the boy while he lets himself be entertained by her husband. Jud tells him about the area, stories from when he was a child and from his parents’ and grandparents’ time. Norma occasionally adds little details, having heard them so often before she can tell them as well as her husband even if she didn’t move here until she’d had a ring on her finger and Jud could carry her across the threshold. Derek looks at them and hopes that he and Stiles will be like this fifty years down the line.

Trisha’s class are going away for a week and Stiles decides to go visit his grandmother, and seeing as she’s his last remaining family and Derek’s been complaining not having written anything since they got here he brings Tad along.  
Together they bring Trisha to the train station and wave her off with all the other parents and when they get back they leave Tad with the neighbors, wanting the evening to themselves. They forego dinner and spend the time in bed, luxuriating in the silence only broken by their own voices, the slow push and pull of unrushed intimacy that’s usually impossible to obtain due to having two small children. They nap, talk, cuddle, fall asleep and wake up an hour before the alarm goes off.  
They take advantage of their extra time, thoroughly showering together until their fingers are wrinkled and the water’s running cold and even then they take a few more minutes enjoying themselves, savoring each other before reluctantly stepping out and towel off, getting dressed and pack the last few things. Derek places the suitcase in the trunk while Stiles knocks on the Crandalls’ door, disappears behind it only to emerge with a fast asleep toddler in his arms.

When Derek gets home after taking Stiles and their son to the airport he throws out the spoilt dinner, washes the dishes and does the laundry before making lunch. He sits down to write but gets lost in thoughts of the night before and barely moves until he’s startled by the phone.  
It barely manages more than two rings before he answers, a smile breaking out on his face at the distorted sound of Stiles telling him he and Tad have arrived and they’ll be home in a few days. The connection is awful and Derek can barely hear half of what Stiles is saying but the important thing is that his family is safe and will be back soon.

\---

When Derek goes to feed the cat the next morning he can’t find it. He searches high and low, every place where he think it can reasonably get to and even a few places that that should be impossible for a cat that size; he’s already picturing Trisha’s tears when he has to tell her he’s lost the cat when he makes his way outside.  
It’s not in the front yard so he makes his way around the house. The back yard stands more or less as it looked the day they moved in: a few smallish flowerbeds and a large patch designated for vegetables, the soil green with weeds and grass – Derek hates gardening and has focused on the front, leaving the rest for Stiles when he gets the time – a few large trees providing shade here and there and at the end of their grounds the hedge (enough to keep the children in but still littered with little holes where animals can get in and out unrestricted) that shields them from the road.  
With a bad feeling Derek makes his way there while his eyes frantically searches the shadows for that familiar grey fur that he doesn’t see until he finally looks over the hedge; one dead cat. Resigned he goes to grab a bag and a shovel, picks up the dead animal and then carefully setting it on the back porch before making his way across the road.

Jud tells him where the children have been burying their pets for the last five decades before sending Derek a contemplating look.  
“She really loves that cat, doesn’t she,” to which Derek only nods, because yes, Trisha loves her cat more than anything else and if he was wary having to tell her it was gone he’s almost heartbroken having to tell her it’s dead.  
It seems as if Jud wants to say something else but in the end he just stands and makes his way back across the street, motioning for Derek to follow. Puzzled he does and when they pass he grabs the bag as he’s told and then follows his neighbor as the man turns right and goes through the hedge on the side, up the small hill next to their house.  
They walk for probably fifteen minutes without saying a word, Derek starting to shiver as a cold wind blows past him and still the old man doesn’t see fit to take a break, at least not until the reach a small stream.

”Back when I was a kid we used to bring our pets up here for burial,” he says. Derek figured he’d have done it in the garden that way Trisha could say goodbye to her cat but before he can say that Jud continues.  
“We always did it up here, and then they came back.” He levels Derek with a serious gaze. “They came back, not as loving as they used to be but we got to keep them with us for a while longer.” And really that’s all Derek need, some stupid ghost story from an old man, but seeing as he’s here he might as well bury the cat, after all Trisha can still say goodbye to it, seeing as it’s not that far from their house.

The next morning Derek’s woken by a pitiful meow, his eyes almost falling from their sockets when he sees his daughter’s cat standing outside the door.

\---

Nothing changes other than he can feel the cat staring at him, making him nervous. It’s not affectionate as it used to be, instead preferring to hide somewhere and be gone at odd times. He picks up Stiles and Tad when they land, deciding not to tell Stiles what has happened unless his husband brings it up, and together they pick up Trisha the next day.

So life continues though Derek begins to notice how his daughter avoid her pet, barely even talks to it and on one occasion he even sees her denying it access to her room, something he’s never experienced before. He doesn’t really get to think about it before tragedy strikes.

To Tad the garden is a magical place filled with wonders and hours of endless fun. For days he’s been playing with Voice who has the best ideas, so when his new friend suggests he should move closer to the hedge at the end of the garden, Tad doesn’t even hesitate but waddles off on his little, chubby legs.  
He gets distracted by a butterfly, it’s wings gleaming in the sun and he tries to catch it though it keeps escaping his eager hands, drawing him closer to the hole in the hedge where a small child would have no problem making its way through, though not as big as to be seen by adults. Tad doesn’t really understand what that awful, honking noise and the screeching mean.

It’s a quiet funeral; Derek’s petrified with grief while Stiles is white as a sheet, tears streaming from his red eyes as they watch the small coffin getting lowered into the ground. They stay even after the priest has left, neither really noticing the sun setting or the temperature lowering. It’s the sexton who makes them leave when he locks up the cemetary.

Stiles works more than he ever has before and Derek barely sees him; when he is home he’s taken to sit in the rocking chair in Tad’s room, staring at nothing as he clutches either one of the boy’s teddy bears or some of his clothes. Derek learns early on that trying to talk about Tad or his own grief will do nothing but drive Stiles from the house, so he takes to shed his own tears outside wait for Stiles and Trisha to leave in the morning.  
Almost six months after Tad’s death Derek finally makes his way across the street when he sees Norma leave for her weekly shopping trip.

One look at Derek and Jud herds him inside sits him at the kitchen table before handing him a beer.  
“My best friend, Tommy, died in the war,” he says to Derek’s bend head. “They brought him home to give him a proper funeral.” He pauses, most likely to gather his thoughts before continuing. “Tommy’s father took him to that patch of land I showed you. And just like every pet before Tommy came wandering down. But he was wrong. I don’t know if it was because it’d been two months since he died or because he’d already been buried at church, but it wasn’t _really_ Tommy that came back.”  
Derek doesn’t say anything, too busy planning and wondering. Fear and hope fighting in his chest because there’s a way, a way to bring Tad back, a way to make Stiles smile again, talk to him again. And if there’s a chance then Derek has to take it, no matter what Jud has to say on the matter.

Derek waits for Stiles to get home. Then he waits an hour more before sneaking outside and put the shovel and the bag in the trunk of the car and driving off.  
Climbing the wall to the graveyard is child’s play and even though he hasn’t been back since that day it takes him less than five minutes to locate his son’s grave. As fast as humanly possible he unearths the coffin, opens it and carefully lifs his boy out and places him in the plastic bag. Then he buries the coffin again, makes his way back over the wall, into the car and drive home.  
He carefully looks for light in his own house as well as the Crandalls’ before taking the boy and making his way through the garden, up the hill and then dig yet another hole in the ground. Exhausted he falls asleep next to Stiles.

\---

There’s the rustle in the leaves where something disturbs them; the fearful hoot from a predator not used to something like this. Small legs carrying a body towards a white house, an even smaller hand closing around a door knob and silently making the way through darkened rooms before stopping inside one; milky white eyes staring unblinking at the bed before carefully turning to the closet, the body going inside looking for something only to emerge, a scalpel held triumphantly in the air.  
It leaves as quietly as it came, leaving the two people in the bed to sleep for a little while longer.

***

When the alarm goes off Derek doesn’t even move, never noticing how Stiles rolls over to slam his hand against the offending machine, gets out of bed and putters around for a few minutes before taking a shower. Stiles doesn’t notice the dirt and leaves on the carpet, nor does he see the open box containing his old scalpels when he grabs a suit from the closet.  
Stiles, leaving his husband to his sleep, makes his way to the kitchen where he intends to make coffee and maybe try to eat something before he has to leave for work. He never registers the muffled sound of movement only the shock of something landing on his back and then pain when the blade connects with his throat. He somehow manages to scream loud enough to get through to Derek, or maybe it’s the _thump_ his body makes when he hits the floor, but it hardly matters when he lays eyes on his attacker, tears welling in his eyes as he gurgles something that was supposed to be words.

Derek doesn’t have time to process the sight of Stiles bleeding from his neck or his son – what _used to be_ his son – with a scalpel in his hand, before the small body makes for him at the same time another, smaller and furrier body, lands on his shoulders.  
A strange calm flows over him and it feels like he has all the time in the world as he grabs the cat and throws it into the wall with all his might, a satisfied smile on his face when the animal doesn’t get up again, before he turns his attention to the child sized body. Even if its stronger than the boy was in life and has better use of its limbs it’s only a matter of time before Derek has wrested the scalpel from its hand and has slit its throat.  


\---

Stiles used to say that Derek surviving the death of his family showed how strong he was, how good he was; Derek used to think it was because he was meant to be Stiles’ and that required being alive. Stiles would usually look at him fondly and call him a sap whenever Derek voiced thoughts like that, but he’d also hold Derek a little closer, kiss him a little deeper so Derek didn’t mind.  
He’s not going to survive this; how horrible it may sound he could carry on after losing Tad and Trisha (she’d been as lifeless as Jud and Norma, gaping wounds under their jaws enough to convince him they, too, were beyond any help possible), but with Stiles gone so is Derek’s will to carry on.

He buries Stiles in a shallow grave and then he sets fire to the neighboring house. Trisha and Tad lying next to each other in the small bed they shared the few times they both slept at the Crandalls’, Jud and Norma placed similarly in their own bed before Derek, with a silent apology, lights the match. Then he goes home, takes a beer from the fridge and places it on the table before sitting down, looking through the window to the flickering flames he can faintly see before placing his head in his hands.

How long he sits there, motionless, doesn’t matter; he doesn’t move when the door behind him scrapes against the floor signaling it’s being opened. He doesn’t flinch when pale, cold arms, smeared with dirt wrap around his shoulders and a well-known voice in his ear rasps:  
“Baby.” 

**End**


End file.
